Melinda (Review Your Ex-Lovers W/O)
Mar 30 '06 (Updated Apr 18 '07)
The Bottom Line is in like.
And finally, we arrive at Melinda, my present girlfriend. It's not a terribly exciting story, though certain portions are redolent of teenage romance novels. To be fresh, I won't copy and paste anything, and will merely retell the story.
It sorta hails back to my freshman year, but not really. I'll just toss this in for trivia. My brother, who was in sixth grade, was talking to Melinda online. I asked him, "Who are you talking to?"
He answered, "Melinda L__."
"Oh, is that Maria L__'s younger sister?"
"Let me check... yes it is... and she says Maria knows you, too."
I enjoy referencing that moment, just to say we were cosmically aligned (albeit facetiously).
Melinda and I began dating my senior year, her freshman year. It's actually quite complicated. I'd noticed that Melinda was quite precocious, and often thought, "Hm, you know, I'd probably date her if she wasn't a freshman." We began talking, and one night she came over. After some flirtation our hands intertwined, Ariel-style.
This pitched me into consternation. Clearly, I liked this girl, but clearly, it wasn't going anywhere (since I was leaving for OU in September). She agreed. We deigned ourselves to be in a quasi-relationship, set to end on May 30th (the day before my birthday), since she'd be 15, and I'd be 18, and that's kinda illegal (it's a bit more complex than that, but that'd leap into exorbitant personal detail).
It was fairly nice, though the usual problems arose. Her parents, understandably, despised my age. Melinda was latently fatigued by my phlegm. And of course, I discovered that Melinda had an exponentially larger sex drive than me (instance # 10480382396).
But, yo, whatever. It concluded. Then, in June, we were hanging out, and began holding hands (only minutes after she'd just screamed at me, actually). The time after that we were making out. So, decided to establish it as a quasi-ex-quasi-relationship, surely to end in September.
It was peaceful, aside from Melinda's occasional qualms with my bad-boyfriend-qualities (1), but slowly I was beginning to descry that Melinda and I, even in the distant-returning-summers future, would never go anywhere. This particularly panged me when I ran into the former girl-of-my-dreams one night. In early August, I broke it up.
Everything was the same, as Melinda and I consistently enjoy unavoidably resplendent conversations. However, after a brief debacle in late August involving moral communism (2), our discussions became heated. She constantly misinterpreted me, and I simply didn't agree with anything she said. Our friendship lacked clarity, and became increasingly frustrating. To avoid a climactic, depressing ending, I told her that we should stop talking (3).
Then, after a few ephemeral Internet discussions and a nuclear fall-out with her sister, we began talking again. Blissfully. Agreeably. For a while, I felt nothing. But then Melinda and I became closer. And closer. And closer. And one night, it hit me. I could conceive of spending the rest of my life with this woman. Shore, it's very unlikely, but worth a shot. I loved her platonically and "liked" her romantically. I threw tiny hints about this over the next few months, but she deflected them all. Then, one late day in December, during my winter break, we began making out.
We discussed it, and I discovered that Melinda had perceived the event as merely routine. This I found bitterly disappointing. I'd had visions of love and beauty and rapport; Melinda expressed ambivalence. She was flying to Boston on vacation, and said she'd decide on "us" by her return. I deciphered most of her signals to mean, "Nope. It's over." So, I went and made out with Heather. For absolutely no reason, other than...
"When you lose what matters the most, all else devalues." -T. Speaker
I posted that I had indeed made out with somebody on my Xanga (which is now extinct), and Melinda read it. She called me, apparently calm and incredulous, but becoming termagant within seconds. This is variably what I heard (mostly verbatim):
"YEAH TOM YOU FUCKED UP YOU MADE ASSUMPTIONS TOM DIDN'T WE TALK ABOUT ASSUMPTIONS YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO ASSUME THINGS TOM OH MY GOD I CAN'T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS YOU ARE SO FUCKING STUPID WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING WERE YOU EVEN THINKING OH MY FUCKING GOD YEAH TOM YOU FELT LOST SO YOU JUST WENT AND MADE OUT WITH THE EASIEST GIRL YOU COULD FIND DIDN'T YOU WHY DON'T YOU JUST MAKE OUT WITH ALL OF YOUR EX-GIRLFRIENDS WHY DON'T YOU JUST MAKE OUT WITH ALL OF THE GIRLS AT OU GOD FUCK YOU KNOW I WAS THINKING THE OTHER DAY AND I THOUGHT ABOUT ALL OF THE GOOD PEOPLE I'VE MET THIS YEAR LIKE AMIR AND MARISSA AND SAMMIE AND I THOUGHT HM WHAT ABOUT TOM NO TOM'S NOT A NICE PERSON BECAUSE I KNOW HE'LL DO SOMETHING THAT I CAN'T FORGIVE HIM ABOUT AGAIN GOD FUCK" (4)
(hangs up)
Of course, that was all interspersed with me equanimitously: "Yep. I'm sorry. You're right. I'm sorry. I fucked up. I'm sorry. I understand. I'm sorry. I think that's a bit exorbitant. I'm sorry." Then, at the end (mordantly): "I'm sorry, Melinda, I forgot I was human. I'll try to be less human for you from now on." (5).
Since Xanga was the big thing at the time, Melinda announced, on Xanga, that she understood that I am human, and that I make mistakes, but that she could no longer talk to me (for a long time, anyway) because she was disgusted with the event. Humorously, two days later she sent me an instant message, professing, "T, I bounce back quickly. Where are you?" And within days, we'd decided to rejoin.
And here we are now. You might wonder, "Tom, how can you do this? You're almost nineteen years old, still at your sexual peak. You're at Ohio University, the number-two party school in the nation. You're surrounded by multitudinous nubile, penetrable flesh and yet you're dating a sixteen-year-old girl who lives one-hundred miles away?"
To them, I say this. First, I'm chaste. I'm still a virgin, because at this point in my life, virginity is the best path for me. thewasp commented, "Tom, I've been reading to see with which woman you lost your virginity, which makes your reviews so far something of a disappointment." And they will end a disappointment. With almost every semi-lengthy relationship I've entered (6), the girl requested that we have sex. I refuse for several reasons. One, sex is a natural act. I don't believe in engaging in it unnaturally. Putting on a fucking condom before I jump between someone's legs sounds bizarre at best. If I'm going to copulate, it'll be in the most animal conditions. That also leads to the procreation aspect. Sex is great, but no matter how much twisting you do, it's for procreation. I like to have purpose in my life. Even typing this, to me, has purpose. If Melinda was on birth control, we'd be having sex hedonistically. I could be creating life, the greatest possible thing, but no, I'm just satisfying my passionate desires. Then you say, "Well, what about when you're forty-five? Will you still want to have kids?" Obviously at some point, I will have to compromise my values. Right now is not the time for that.
Am I hostile toward sexually active people? Not at all. Nearly all of my friends are sexually active, and if that's what they want, no big deal. But all of them run into adverse consequences (STDs, pregnancy, fear of pregnancy). I prefer chastity to those consequences.
Then there's this damn school. The girls at OU, in stereotype, are dumb. They're the exact preppy-jock brand I avoided throughout high school. The good ones are taken or not looking. Why would I want anything to do with these women? Then you ask, "Aren't you transferring to Miami next year?" Yes. But I know women there too. I'm not attracted (romantically) to ones that I do know, and the unfamiliar ones don't seem worth the effort.
Then there's Melinda. Soul mate? Naw. I don't even believe in that stuff anymore. All of the women who I thought I was made for turned out to be something else. I like Melinda because she has flaws and doesn't aspire to be an ideal coquet. I love talking to her and holding her and all that stuff. It's worth fighting the odds.
Even inured to these conditions, will we travail for the next several years? It's unlikely, but it's worth a shot. We're both completely unaware of how difficult this will be, but presently, why not? (7)
Melinda's quality as a girlfriend. That's what you've been waiting for. Since this was her first relationship, she can often be very naive, but she's much more mature than she was the first two times we dated, and I rarely feel like I'm talking to a sophomore. All of her idiosyncrasies are hilarious, but fun to rag on (8), though her irascibility can be frustrating. Yet the experience, on the whole, has been very positive (she will read this).
And just for all you sappy bastards out there, here is the only existing digital picture of us:
http://www.xanga.com/tspeaker10
Yeah, I look kinda shit-faced (I wasn't). Don't worry; the picture on the right is much more trustworthy.
Rating: 4/5 Stars
Other Rating: B+
Recommended:: Yes
1. Melinda, at the time, had a Xanga. One of her posts was querulous and explosive. She's often precarious, and assuming the situation to be custom, I didn't call her. Wrong decision.
2. This isn't worth telling, but I'll write it down here. I wanted to see Headphones in concert, but with a friend. I invited Melinda. Melinda couldn't come, because of her parents. Melinda, before discovering this, had invited Maria, her older sister. Even though Melinda couldn't go, I still invited Maria to come along. Melinda discouraged this, and became quite upset with me for inviting her.
3. Melinda presently insists that this proves my social gaucheness; I personally believe it pragmatic.
4. At the end, she was referring to me not saying good-bye before I left for OU. This was not deliberate. I wasn't very much aware of it; I almost left without saying good-bye to my mother.
5. It only struck me later that it should have been "I forgot I wasn't human."
6. None of them consistently lasted more than three weeks, discarding Micah. Melinda's has continued for almost three months.
7. There are ample reasons for Melinda not to, but she too defends against these.
8. The most protuberant example is her once saying, "I feel so happy... I just want to build a chair."
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Member: Tom Speaker
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